Just Watching
by Whiskey Meteor
Summary: A contemplative Tara watches Willow. Set during season six.


Title: Just watching  
  
Author: Whiskey Meteor  
  
Rating: PG-13  
  
Summary: A contemplative Tara watches Willow secretly.  
  
Disclaimer: I don't own 'em, and I aint makin' any money off 'em.  
  
Notes: Tara's POV. Set during season six. Sort of deals with character death.  
  
_________________________________________________________________  
  
She's so peaceful in her sleep. Quiet and almost child-like, she curls on her side with her lips parted just so. Somehow, in her bed at night, she seems to lose the pain and loneliness that she carries during the day. Her hair spreads out on the white pillow and surrounds her head like a halo, and for whatever reason that makes me laugh despite myself.   
  
Here in the dark her colors are all grey, washed out in shadow and pale starlight. But in the light she glows, an angel lit with radiant beauty. And power. I can't forget the power. For so long it lit her, and I was silent as the spark grew and consumed. I should have said something sooner, warned her, helped her see what the magic was doing to her. But I let it go too far because I loved her, love her, so much that it made me blind. I just didn't want to see that she was losing herself to the magic.   
  
And then I saw. And then I left. And now I'm here in the room that used to be ours, watching her sleep, and she looks so small all alone in that big bed.  
  
I shouldn't be here watching her, I know. But there's something in the peace she has when she sleeps that manages to calm me as well. So I watch, quiet and pensive, and she sleeps, oblivious that this old lover is checking up on her.  
  
She frowns and her hands clench onto the blankets as some bad dream disturbs her peaceful sleep. She stirs, agitated, pretty lips drawn into a tight line, and it breaks my heart to see her in distress and not be at her side. I wish I could help her. Wish I could banish these bad dreams. If I could go to her, crawl into that big bed beside her, I could wrap my arms around her lithe form and hold her until peace returned.  
  
But I can't crawl in beside her. I can't hold her, can't kiss her, can't help her. She needs to do this by herself. It kills me to admit it, and to watch her do it. But I know she's strong, and getting through this alone will only make her stronger. I shouldn't even be watching her.  
  
The bad dream passes and she rolls onto her back, peaceful once again. The sheets slip from her fists as they relax, but the soft, white fabric remains bunched and deeply creased where she held it. I think of myself like that, forever malformed, forever bearing the shape of her influence if she were to let me go.   
  
I watch the gentle swell of her breasts rise and fall as she breathes, and I am reminded of so many nights spent like this. But then I was under the covers with her. I'd watch her sleep, then, and put my hand on her chest to feel her breathing. Making sure, I guess, that she *was* breathing-- that she really was there alive beside me, and not just a wonderful dream.  
  
My heart burns and I want nothing more than to go to her side, to rest my head on her chest and feel the proof of her reality again. To wake her with kisses and gentle hands. I know her body; I hold its curves and lines in my memory like precious secrets. The subtle dip where shoulder meets neck, the velvet cushion of flesh that wraps the inner-thigh like a gift... If I were to press my lips against her skin, but an inch below her navel, she would wake purring like a contented house-cat. I could make her pant and moan, and reach inside to stroke her heart with whispered words of adoration. But I can only watch. That's the way that it has to be.  
  
***  
  
I know she has a class, but she's not going. Instead, she's sitting on a long, wooden bench in the park with her hands folded in her lap. I'm watching her, though I know I shouldn't be. I feel like I'm invading her privacy, but she looks so sad, so alone. And somehow I feel like I should keep an eye on her.   
  
I left her. I'm the reason she's alone right now.  
  
We used to come here together. We'd sit on that same wooden bench and watch the pidgins on the grass and talk about silly things that didn't matter. And sometimes we'd talk about things that did matter-- life and death and everything in between. And sometimes she'd press her lips to mine and we wouldn't talk about anything at all. It was magic. Not the magic of potions and incantations, but that of beating hearts and endless kisses, of hands that knew without asking all the ways to make me sigh and forget the world.  
  
Sometimes we'd sit on that bench with clasped hands and complacent smiles, happily remembering the previous night's passion. Passers by didn't know: we were a secret-- our love was a secret, a special fact shared only by the two of us. And we held our secret furtively in the space between us, like a fresh-cut flower that could be bruised even by the slightest breath. It felt like that would last forever, that simple, easy love. But then things got in the way-- squeezed between us and reduced our love to memories.  
  
Now she sits on the bench we used to share, and she looks so alone. If I could go to her, sit beside her wordlessly and take her hand in mine... But I can't go to her now. I shouldn't even be watching her.  
  
The park is busy, full of people walking and talking and going on with their simple little lives. They walk by her one by one and, wrapped up in their own affairs, they look right through her. That thought, the possibility that any one could *not* notice her, is incomprehensible to me. When I look around, all I see is her. I see her in the child playing on the lush, green grass, careless and free. And in the first star that lights in the heavens, tentative and shy in her growing brilliance. I see her too, now, in the storm clouds when they creep across the sky, crackling with energy and just waiting to let it free. And in the grass that grows up between the cracks in the pavement, relentless and unwilling to accept restraint. I see that things are so different for her now. So hard.  
  
I've watched her spill enough tears to drown us both, though today she does not cry. Today she simply sits and looks down at her hands where they lie in her lap. She opens them, palms up, and cups them together like an empty bowl. She looks down into them, and I wonder what she's thinking, what she sees there. Maybe all she sees is the emptiness that she's made.  
  
"Willow," I want to say, "give it time." She has to have patience. She has to learn that things take time. I could tell her this along with a million other things(I love you, I miss you, I forgive you...), but instead I stay where I am, watching. She has to do this alone and I shouldn't even be watching.  
  
***  
  
I follow her as she leaves the park. She walks slowly, purposefully, to a place that she visits often. I've watched her here, without her knowing, more times than I can remember. It's a graveyard, and there are people here that she loved-- relatives, friends --and she comes here to visit them as she would were they still alive. Buffy was buried here once. She lay in the grave, at peace, until we pulled her back and she had to dig her way out of the ground. The plot where she was buried is still there. The headstone is gone, and the earth is undisturbed as she left it, an open mouth into the ground, hungry and waiting. Willow goes to that place sometimes, and stands silently thinking things I probably don't want to comprehend. Joyce was laid to rest here as well. I've seen Willow stop by her graveside and talk, usually with a smile and a memory to share.   
  
But today she has another loved one to visit. She finds the grave and I watch her stoop and fall lightly onto her knees by the headstone.   
  
The grass is damp and it soaks up into her pants, leaving dark patches that spread out from wherever she touches the earth. It pulls my mind back to another time, sitting on damp grass and leaning together, feeling the rush of new love.   
  
It seems so long ago: lunch-time on campus, picnicking on the grass. We lay back and the wet soaked through to our skin while we were distracted by each other. We went back to my room, then, and with tentative reverence we peeled off each other's damp clothes. We were so quiet-- afraid, I think, of waking ourselves from what felt like a magical dream. That day we sought solace from the cold in each other's arms beneath white cotton sheets. And it was so perfect, so right, that we never wanted to come out of hiding.  
  
When I close my eyes, I can still feel her. Her body, hands, lips, tongue-- they've all been imprinted on my mind and my skin, and burned into my heart like a brand. I was hers.   
  
I *am* hers.   
  
I remember every curve and soft line of her body. I could never forget the subtle swell of her breasts, or the delicate plump of her lips. And I'll always remember all the ways to make her back arch and her body tense like a bow with the string pulled taut. The breathy gasp, the throaty moan, the sweet slide of lovers moving together... My memories write a song of love and passion, and my body sings the refrain: we were magic, each built to be the perfect fit for the other. Being apart seems cardinally wrong and infinitely stupid.  
  
I wish that I could go to her now and familiarize my memories with flesh and bone, but I can't. I can't interfere. I shouldn't even be watching her.  
  
She reaches out and lays her hands flat on the headstone. Her eyes close and her mouth curves down into a frown. A small line creases her forehead, right between her brows above the bridge of her nose, and I wonder at how such a tiny line could convey so much pain. It makes me ache to see her so sad and alone. If only for my own sake, I should stop watching and just let her be. But she's in my heart and in my mind like a splinter buried deep inside my flesh. The pain of not seeing her, of not knowing she was okay... that would be worse, I'm sure, than the pain of seeing her like this. One day I know she'll be better, and seeing that will make up for watching her hurt for so long.  
  
She pulls herself back to her feet, and places a small crystal (a trinket that I recognize as a symbol of love and remembrance) on the rounded top of the headstone. Then she looks up into the sky, which stretches clear and blue above her. The sun is bright today, as it so often is here, and it looks down, brightly mocking her sadness.  
  
"Tara?" she says. It takes me a moment to remember that she's not really talking to me. "I miss you, baby." She looks down at the headstone and runs a hand over its surface almost fondly, as sad smile twists her lips. "God, I miss you so much. I'll always..." Her voice falters and her eyes brim with tears. I watch her stand there beside my grave and weep quietly for a long time, and I think about how unfair it is that I can't go to her. I could wipe away her tears, steady her shaking form, hold her hands and make her strong again. If I could-- if I were allowed to do more than just watch. But if I touched her now, it would only make her shiver.  
  
She covers her face with her hands (slender, delicate fingers that used to fit between mine like they were designed to), which she cups again like an empty bowl. I imagine them catching her grief and holding it for her, lightening the load that she must bear by herself, if only for a time. The shake of her shoulders slows as she regains her composure, and I think to myself that such pretty shoulders, innocent and almost child-like in their slenderness, should never have to shake with grief. I wish that I never had to see her slight form shake with anything but laughter and sweet rapture. But wishes of that kind are rarely granted, and it's been a long time since I saw her feel anything but sadness.  
  
"I'm doing better," she says, looking up into the wide, blue sky again. Then she shrugs, gives a little snort. "With the magics, anyway." She's talking to me, but somehow I feel like I'm intruding on something personal. Like I'm listening in on a conversation that I shouldn't be part of. I wish that I could look away, close my eyes and my ears and leave her in peace. But I can't. Not yet.   
  
I shouldn't be watching. Shouldn't see her big eyes overflow with tears. Shouldn't see her slight shoulders curl forward under the weight of her grief. I should be in another place, far, far away from here and nestled in the past. And there, in my reward, my ever after, I'll see her the way she should be-- the way she was. I'll see her smiling, laughing, sleeping the easy sleep of the innocent. I'll see her hand in mine, fingers knit together in the way that they were made to. I'll see her spread before me with heavy lidded eyes and silent lips parted and panting. And I'll feel her with me, beside me, inside me, and all around me from now into eternity. Because we are, were, will be always and forever. That's my heaven.  
  
But for now, for now all I can do is watch. I can't look away. I can't leave her now, not until I know that she'll be okay without me.  
  
"Tara," she says, "I wish..." Tears again, and then she reaches out and lays her hands flat on my headstone, smiling a small, sad smile. "It would be so much easier if you were here with me." Then she closes her eyes, and though her lips don't move, I can hear her memories singing.   
  
In her mind, she dances through time, back, back, back to when we first met. She remembers clasping hands that first time, desperately, mutely, and feeling our power flow out and mesh along with our fingers. She remembers how we knew then, felt it so clearly and suddenly like the world had opened up and whispered her secrets in our ears, that we would be together. She sees that night in my room, quiet again, peeling our dewy clothes off of each other. And her body remembers every single time and place that I touched it, and when she opens her eyes again, she seems to be standing a little bit taller.  
  
She takes her hands off the headstone, and lays one over her heart. And then she smiles. A real smile. Her cheeks are still wet with tears, but it's still a real smile, and it makes her look so alive again. It's finally dawning on her, I think, that moving on doesn't mean forgetting. She's starting to understand, and to really believe, that we are forever. It'll still be hard. But she'll be okay. I can see that now as plainly as she can.  
  
The wind picks up and stirs the leaves on the trees until they whisper like a stream, and I let it carry me up and away with it, swirling into the clouds and beyond. Below, the breeze kisses Willow's face and dries her tears, and before she passes out of sight I see her memories dancing back through time. And I can feel her understand that I am and always will be there with her.   
  
With her, beside her, inside her, and all around her. I'm alive in her heart, in her memories, whenever she needs me. Always and forever. The way we were meant to be.  
  
The End 


End file.
